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The Golden Bootstraps
Author: Raine    Date: 10/05/2009 13:11:39

I watched "Capitalism: A Love Story" yesterday morning. Although I knew what I was going to see, and knew many of the items of interest in the move before going in, I came away shaken and as the day went on I became distressed. The corporate powers are so great in this country I wonder if We the people... is going to disappear forever.
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19 comments (Latest Comment: 10/05/2009 20:48:23 by livingonli)

News Insanity
Author: velveeta jones    Date: 10/04/2009 14:26:33

The Neo-clowns are pranking us all - once again - with their antics that are crazier than Velveeta's Great Aunt Lolla that used to wander the halls of the old folks home selling slightly used crackers; a strange metaphor for her dementia.

Recently, we were graced with the news that Sarah Palin is writing a book! Well, she's too busy doing, um, something, to actually write it herself. But the book is on its way with the help of woman by the name of Lynn Vincent. Ms Vincent is a delightful woman whose previous work includes a tome called Donkey Cons an investigative book about the democratic mafia party.

She also ghost wrote the memoir of Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the former head of the Army's Special Forces Command, who literally believes that his job in the U.S. military was to defeat Satan for the Christian nation of America. A man who once stood at the pulpit of a church in 2002 (First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow, Okla.) and, after showing slides of battles from Somalia told the congregation "Ladies and gentleman, this is your enemy. It is the principalities of darkness. It is a demonic presence in that city that God revealed to me as the enemy."
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5 comments (Latest Comment: 10/05/2009 03:27:18 by livingonli)

The perils of being a frozen head
Author: TriSec    Date: 10/03/2009 11:26:28

Good Morning!

October...and the end of the Outdoor Discovery School season at ol' LL Bean. Today's my last shift for the school, but the weather is going to be suck-o-licious, so I don't know if anything is going to be happening at the store today.

Fall is starting in earnest around these parts. Some leaves are starting to turn...it's opening weekend for the Topsfield Fair, and as it starts to get colder and darker, I often ponder the life cycle of this earth and its inhabitants....namely us.

Now sure, we'd all like to live forever, but that's just not a realistic option for most of us. I'm sure we're all young and mostly healthy....but have you given any thought at all to your final resting place? I know I'd like to be cremated, and perhaps have the ashes scattered around Kejimkujik National Park in Nova Scotia, but I suppose I have time to worry about that.

Or you could go the Gene Roddenberry route, and have your ashes vacuum-dessicated and pressed into a tiny capsule and shot into space. Cool and uber-geeky, but damn expensive.

Ah, I know. How about making like Walt Disney and having your body frozen, in the hopes that some future science can cure whatever killed you and bring you back to life? No wait...that's an urban legend...

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23 comments (Latest Comment: 10/04/2009 04:30:36 by livingonli)

Treason
Author: BobR    Date: 10/02/2009 12:43:27


Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies. - The American Heritage Dictionary

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. - Article 3, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution


Words are like living things. They come into vogue, get bandied about, become part of the zeitgeist, lose their power due to overuse, and then fade away again, rarely mentioned, like an urn of ashes on the fireplace mantle. It seems the word treason is like that.
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67 comments (Latest Comment: 10/02/2009 21:55:56 by IzzyBitz)

This is what it's come to.
Author: Raine    Date: 10/01/2009 12:53:39

The White House has actually called the Fox News Network liars.

In a blog post titled Turning a Point of Pride into a Moment of Shame, author Jesse Lee called them out on the various lies they are telling about the White house and the bid various people are making to bring the Olympics to America -- specifically, Chicago. (expect Faux outrage from Faux news)
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62 comments (Latest Comment: 10/02/2009 04:57:15 by BobR)

Lunatic Fringe
Author: BobR    Date: 09/30/2009 12:45:50

The protests have died down for now, perhaps because the participants have run out of steam, or they're just preparing for the next round. The last big protest in DC - some 60-70,000 strong was a mixed bag of causes, with signs ranging from the simple to the poorly spelled to the disgustingly offensive. Who are these people and what are the protesting against (and/or what are they for?). They are most often split into one of three camps: The Teabaggers, the Tenthers, and/or The Birthers.
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61 comments (Latest Comment: 09/30/2009 20:55:43 by Raine)

Ask a Vet
Author: TriSec    Date: 09/29/2009 10:41:48

Good Morning.

Today is our 2,386th day in Iraq.

We'll start this morning as we always do, with the latest casualty figures from Iraq and Afghanistan, courtesy of Antiwar.com:

American Deaths
Since war began (3/19/03): 4345
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03): 4206
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 3882
Since Handover (6/29/04): 3486
Since Obama Inauguration (1/20/09): 117

Other Coalition Troops - Iraq: 325
US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 838
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 566
Contractor Employee Deaths - Iraq: 1,395
Journalists - Iraq: 335
Academics Killed - Iraq: 431

We find this morning's cost of war passing through:
$ 914, 729, 400, 000 .00



Turning to our friends at IAVA....I haven't posted the news from them verbatim in quite some time. It's easy to do, so I try not to do it that often. But on the other hand, we haven't had a straight "ask a vet" in a while either. So....here's the latest daily briefing.

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68 comments (Latest Comment: 09/30/2009 04:56:02 by livingonli)

News on the news
Author: Raine    Date: 09/28/2009 12:29:41

Is this the future of the news? CBS has decided to partner with Global Post -- a web site for foreign news. PBS has done the same with Tehran Bureau -- a site I first stumbled across during the Iranian protests that began earlier this year, the New York Times is reporting this morning.

I am quite mixed about this. While I tend to trust PBS more than CBS to do the right thing with the information gleaned from these webites, I wonder what they will do to the actual stories? GlobalPost seems like it has a good business model. We need good foreign reporting - but what we need even more is more honesty from our own media.
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81 comments (Latest Comment: 09/29/2009 02:47:51 by Mondobubba)

Come Clean
Author: velveeta jones    Date: 09/27/2009 13:18:17

"...art can transcend pain." Roman Polanski spoke these words when he won the Oscar for Best Director for the emotional film "The Pianist" in 2003. Roman has long been one of my favorite directors, he and his movies are iconic and will be with us long after he's gone: Rosemary's Baby, Death and the Maiden, Chinatown, Tess and one of the films that got me interested in the study of film 1965's "Repulsion".

Roman has not set foot in the US or UK since his indictment of child rape in 1977. Last night, he was finally arrested for his crime.
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8 comments (Latest Comment: 09/28/2009 12:59:14 by Raine)

Cleaning out the drawer of the blog mind...
Author: TriSec    Date: 09/26/2009 13:08:54

With the usual apologies to Bob Ryan, from whom I shamelessly steal this idea from time to time.

You wanna buy a Fiat?

Yeah, that's right...the longtime Italian carmaker that hasn't sold a car in the United States for quite some time. (Like most carmakers though, they're a giant conglomorate. You can easily find Alfa-Romeos and Maseratis here, but not the 'base' nameplate.)

In any case, you might remember that Chrysler has a huge stake in Fiat. You might also be aware that Chrysler can't sell a car in the US to save their company. So.....instead of the folks in Detroit taking the time and effort to design and build a car in the US that people might want to buy, they've decided to put the Chrysler label on this:

http://www.carpages.co.uk/fiat/fiat_images/fiat-500-16-04-08.jpg


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12 comments (Latest Comment: 09/26/2009 22:24:29 by Mondobubba)

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